Avenue G's San Francisco Cuisine Needs a Road Map

I think the pork wasn't stuffed that night. Anyway, my slice — I just checked the remains in the fridge — betrays nothing of the rosemary, prosciutto, and fontina stuffing mentioned on the menu. It was covered with a marsala mushroom cream sauce, topped with a few slices of underripe fig, and artlessly sided by a clump of congealed polenta and another clump of spinach. If the polenta had been mashed potatoes, and the spinach had been speckled with an enormous quantity of chopped garlic, the plate could have issued from an Iowa kitchen rather than an Italian one. My friends, again, think I have ended up with the best dish on the table, but I'm not really beguiled. The plate apparently was cooling for some time, and the pork is not only barely lukewarm, it also has the same mushy texture as both the fish dishes.

The desserts are, if anything, more careless than what came before: an individual cheesecake so dry and hard that my spoon bounces off it, really nasty; and "berries and cream" that turn out to be chunks of the same underripe figs, plums, and tasteless strawberries under unadulterated whipped cream.

Jen Siska

Avenue G's menu promises the world, but it can't even deliver San Francisco.

Location Info

Map

Avenue G

1570 Stockton St
San Francisco, CA 94133-3306

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Embarcadero

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Details

1570 Stockton (at Union), 989-0399, www.restaurantavenueg.com. Open daily from 4:30 p.m. to midnight. Reservations accepted. Wheelchair accessible. Parking: Street, difficult. Muni: 30, 39, 41, 45. Noise level: Moderate.

Duck spring rolls $10

Sea bass seviche $11

Dungeness crab pot pie $12

Sea bass feijoada $21

Catalan salmon with prawns $19

Pork Valdostana $19

Cheesecake $6

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More About

• Financial District
• Gordon Ramsay
• Daniel Patterson
• Seafood
• Foods

I take another look at the menu. (There's also a bar menu, with such items as baked brie and something called Nashville Fingers, which are chicken tenders, oy vey, done what seems to me to be Buffalo-style with Tabasco, celery, and blue cheese ranch dressing.) There are so many wacky-sounding ingredients on the menu, in such unappealing combinations, that I expect Gordon Ramsay to burst out of the kitchen in a nightmare, simplifying as he goes. Avenue G's menu promises the world, but it isn't delivering.